People purified by Christ to become temples for God’s glory

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne at Choral Evensong on the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple 2024:

Tonight’s readings for the celebration of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (1 Samuel 1.21-28 and John 2.13-25) take us away from the infant Jesus in the arms of aged Simeon (shown above in our stained glass windows), when he sang his prophetic song about how he would enlighten the nations, and become the glory of God’s chosen people, Israel. In our second lesson, from John’s gospel, Jesus is not brought up to Jerusalem for purification to the Temple. Instead, he purifies the Temple. In John’s story, we meet Jesus as an adult—baptised by John in the Jordan, he had been proclaimed by John the Baptist to be ‘God’s Son’ and the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. He had gathered disciples around him, who had also proclaimed him to be God’s Son, and the King of Israel. In turn, he promised them that they would see ‘heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’. And he had just attended a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and used six giant water jars for purifying household objects according to the Jewish law to make 800 litres of the finest wine.

A few days after this, his first miracle, or sign, changing objects for ritual purification into vessels for divine generosity, Jesus goes to the heart of ritual worship in Jerusalem, and symbolically purifies the Temple. Jesus and his disciples had gone up from Galilee in order to join with countless other pilgrims in celebrating the Passover; the liberation of his people from slavery in Egypt. As Jesus entered the temple, he found it not to be a place of prayer. Instead, it was busy with people selling cattle and doves, and exchanging Roman money for Temple money. Jesus, we read, ‘making a whip of cords, and drove all out of the Temple’, thus purifying the place of ritual sacrifice (Jn. 2.15). His action caused wide-spread confusion: bawling animals running about aimlessly; money changers scrambling for their coins on the floor of the temple courts; officials trying to take hold of Jesus, shouting at him, and arguing with him about the rights of his case.

John places the cleansing of the Temple right at the beginning of his story of Jesus’ public ministry. The other three evangelists tell this story at the end of their gospels, just before Jesus’ arrest, trial an crucifixion. But for John, this story is a continuation of Jesus’ first sign, which signalled the purification of the whole world at the time of fulfilment: the use of the jars of water for purification under the Jewish law for the new wine of the Kingdom of God mirrors the shedding of his blood on the cross to make pure the world from sin and evil. And now he is taking that new wine, to the heart of Jewish ritual life by purifying the Temple, and points again to the cross where he will break down the final barriers in human living—by conquering death and making peace with God. And where in the story of the wedding at Cana, no one other than Mary, his mother, the disciples, and the wedding guests witnessed his re-purposing of things set aside for the observance of the ritual law for the new things God was doing; here, in the Temple, everyone witnessed his actions, and found them to be outrageous.

Because Jesus not only drove out the salespeople, but also held the officials to account for their actions: ‘Take these things out of here!’, he told them, ‘stop making my Father’s house a marketplace’ (Jn 2.16). Jesus’ friends have already proclaimed him to be God’s Son, and they interpret his actions from that vantage point: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’, they recall the scriptures—they know Jesus to be God’s Son, and of course, God’s Son would show zealous anger about his Father’s house. But the people gathered in the Temple have only just met Jesus. They have no idea of who he is, and why he is doing what he is doing. And that the place where they are meeting is not their Temple, but ‘my Father’s house’. In fact, it is not even a Temple, but a marketplace. In this brief interchange, Jesus shares with them incredible, and potentially offensive news: that he is God’s Son, and that God is displeased with their worship. And the people are startled and angry, and demand to see the authority for his actions. ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’, they ask him. ‘What miracle will you perform to show that you truly are acting with the power of God?’

But we, who have read John’s story carefully and understood it from the vantage point of the cross, know that Jesus has already performed his sign. Miles away, in Cana at Galilee, when he turned the jars of ritual purification into a giant wine cellar and so signalled an end to religious rites that are without meaning. Instead of performing another sign, he makes the people a promise instead: ‘Destroy this temple’, he tells them, ‘and I will raise it in three days’ (Jn 2.19). John tells us that his listeners thought that Jesus was speaking of the building that surrounded them: Herod’s Temple, a grandiose shell that had been in construction for forty-six years already, and would still remain incomplete for another thirty years. But the evangelist tells us that Jesus was speaking of another Sanctuary. Not the physical structure of Herod’s incomplete house of prayer, but the ‘Temple of his body’.

The raising of Jesus on the cross—the destruction of his own body—and the raising, three days later, from the tomb would be the sign of God’s authority. ‘The real temple of God’, Jesus tells his listeners, ‘is not Herod’s building site in which we stand, but he stands among you right now. ‘The complete offering for the forgiveness of sins’, he adds, ‘can never be made by killing a newly purchased bull on the splendid bronze altar of this temple, but only by the sacrifice of God’s own Son on a cross’. A scapegoat sent to die in the desert once a year can never provide a sacrifice powerful enough to break the power of sin and evil and the barrier between God and man, once and for all. Only the ignominious death of Jesus on the cross can tear apart the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the world; can throw wide open the sanctuary of God in the Temple (Mk. 15.38par).

As the letter to the Hebrews explains: ‘It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.  Indeed, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “‘”See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”. … Christ abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’. (Hebrews 10.5-10)

When they look at the world from the vantage point of Christ’s resurrection, the disciples know how to make sense of Jesus’ words, and the Scripture that promised the hope of new life brought by the death of the Messiah. That the sacrifice of Christ on the cross remains valid for all times and in all places; that that sacrifice has been accomplished once for all generations when Christ gave his own body as a Sanctuary and sacrifice for God as he breathed his last on the cross, purified the world from sin and death, and ‘abolished the first in order to establish the second’.

And as he prophesied at the beginning of John’s story, three days later, the Temple of his body was raised again. When Jesus died, the Temple of his body was destroyed, abolished. When he rose from the dead, that bodily Temple was renewed. This new Temple is there for all generations: not just there to be seen by the first disciples of Jesus at the empty tomb, or to be touched by the doubting Thomas. No, this new temple stands today wherever people want to become the ‘living stones’ that make up God’s sanctuary on earth. For in the light of the cross and resurrection, the God who once could only ever be encountered in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple has come to dwell right among us.  Not only in the risen body of Jesus, but in our own bodies; calling all of us to become living Temples of his Holy Spirit.

Just as he had prophesied in our second reading, on the first Easter day the Temple of Christ’s body had been raised up triumphantly. It remains with us today as a sign of God’s victory over sin and death. But it isn’t just a testimony to God’s work of resurrection, accomplished some two millennia ago. Rather, it is a constant invitation. A call to each of us to let ourselves be built into living Temples—to become ourselves homes of God’s Holy Spirit—to be the places where God may dwell on earth (1 Pet 2.5). A call to be purified as Christ is pure, and to become people who through their faith, and through their actions reflect the greatest of all of Jesus’ signs, the sign of lives restored and transformed forever to his glory.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.

Image: Mary and Joseph present the infant Christ to Simeon, Stained Glass Window at St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne.

The Miracle of Grace

A sermon preached by Dean Andreas Loewe at St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne on Advent Sunday 2023:

‘Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ’, our patron addresses the people of Corinth in his first letter to them. Grace is God’s invitation to share in his life; it is his call to us t to be loving, generous, forgiving and merciful. Every day, God’s grace is miraculously poured into our broken world. Every day, grace invites us to become more like God.

I give thanks for the power of God’s grace to change lives. Our second lesson from 1 Corinthians 1-9 is framed entirely in terms of thanksgiving for the grace we have received from God. It is God’s miraculous gift of grace, Paul reminds the people of Corinth that brought about their changed lives. We receive that grace from God the Father, Paul tells. That grace is shown forth at its fullest in the most graceful person ever to have walked this earth: God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We can share in God’s grace today, through the power of the Holy Spirit among us.

Grace often comes when we least expect it. Grace is always extraordinary. Grace is often miraculous. And that is why we need to keep our eyes open to see grace at work. We at St Paul’s have some amazing people among us. This week, I have asked four of our lay canons about where they have seen God’s grace at work, to help us in our own reflections on what grace is, and how grace can change us and our world.

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Lay Canon Mia Lucas-Bray is currently on secondment in London, at the Church Urban Fund, a UK charity that enables churches to serve the poorest of the poor; particularly people facing homelessness. Mia told me: ‘I’m lucky to witness grace at work every day. My job involves supporting churches to make a difference in their local communities. One project we run is called Places of Welcome, where churches open a safe space for everyone in the community to come and get to know one another, and provide support (whether that’s material needs, friendship, or connection to other services). These spaces are run almost entirely based on the generosity of volunteers—many of whom started coming because they were in need themselves’. 

On a visit to one of her Church Urban Fund Places of Welcome Mia met a volunteer whose grandmother had just died. Quite lonely in her later life, the grandma had started coming to the Places of Welcome, where everyone got to know her and offered her support. The volunteer told Mia how her grandma talked about the Places of Welcome all the time. How going there made her feel happy, how she had friends there, and how grateful she was to be part of a community where she was known and welcomed. And then the granddaughter told Mia that she had become a volunteer herself because she wanted to share the love her grandma had received with others. When we give away the grace that we have received from God to others, that grace is amplified.

Grace can multiply in that way, because God is generous, and his grace is boundless. The service of the granddaughter who now volunteers at the centre where her late grandma had found community is a great example of how when we share God’s grace even more grace flows into our world. When we give it to others, more grace flows. Canon Mia’s story reflects an important aspect of what Paul writes about in our second reading: when we share God’s grace, we ourselves will not go empty—‘you are not lacking in any spiritual gift’ (1 Cor. 1.7). People who have experienced God’s grace are not lacking, but will want to share that grace; like the grandmother who told her granddaughter all the time about the love and care she received. Mia said to me: ‘For me that story is a lovely example of God’s grace, calling us to him and helping us to be more like him’.

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God’s grace makes us less selfish. Grace can lift our vision to see the people who are around us with God’s eyes. Grace makes us kinder, more compassionate. Lay Canon Avril Brereton is a clinical psychologist who works with autistic children. I asked her whether she had seen God’s grace at work this week. This is what Avril said: ‘In my work with children and their parents, I am met daily with examples of grace, particularly the kindness and compassion of parents. For example: today, the mother and father who were desperate to find out why their son can talk, but can’t have a conversation with them, or look people in the eye, and won’t play with other children. And they say to me: “I just want him to be the best he can be”. Unqualified love, and attachment, that helps them to keep seeking answers and find ways to help their son. This, to me, is grace’, Avril said.

When we share the grace we have received from God with others, grace can help us find answers to complex problems. Avril’s story reflects another important insight that Paul sets out: ‘in every way you have been enriched [by grace] in Christ Jesus, in speech and knowledge of every kind’. But grace not only enriches us. It can also make us more patient with others who have yet to learn what we have already found out for ourselves. Avril told me: ‘My job is to help the parents who see me on their journey, provide some answers as to what the problem is, give it a name they can understand and explain to others who cross their son’s path. My job is to build their confidence and resilience, and to be there to support them. I am privileged and thankful, and by grace my faith sustains me in this work’.

Grace gives us insight of God’s plan for this world to be made whole. Grace gives us the words to express God’s vision. It can enable us to find the right words to make sense of complex situations, as Avril told us about her interaction with the parents of the autistic boy who came to her clinic this week. Avril told us another important thing that Paul also tells the Corinthians. That we are made stronger because we know that God is at work among us. Paul put it this way: ‘The testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you and God will strengthen you to the end’ (1 Cor 1.6). When we draw on the grace we have received from God in our work and ministry, we begin to see the world through the eyes of Jesus. When we talk about that changed vision—Paul uses an even stronger world, when we ‘testify’ to the transformational work of Christ in our lives—we are strengthened.

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Grace sustains us. Grace strengthens to face difficult and dangerous situations. Another Lay Canon of St Paul’s, Naomi Nayagam, has recently worked for the United Nations in a war zone. She told me that it was God’s grace that helped her face danger and conflict: ‘I was based in Cabo Delgado, a war-torn area in the North of Mozambique. I was leading a massive team to deliver numerous projects to help vulnerable and marginalised people. The UN’s work is to make a difference, and my usual team briefings ended with a reminder to ourselves that we are here to serve. That was not easy. We faced massive challenges, including political interferences and security threats. It was risky, but we continued day after day’.

Naomi told me that she was herself put in danger because she was calling out corruption in the community and in government: ‘I personally had a very rough time, as I had to make decisions for the common good, which meant going against other people’s views. When I was out in the community—in a village, or at high-level discussions, or just to go shopping—I had to have personal security. I risked my life, and it didn’t bother me. What bothered me the most was that I was responsible for the safety of my staff, over 100 of them’.

I asked Naomi how she coped with being in a war-zone, being responsible for a large team of people, facing personal danger. She told me: ‘I have been unbelievably calm, to the extent I was surprised with myself. How did I manage? How did I cope? The answer is very simple: it was God’s grace. Even when I found it difficult to pray, I knew there were so many praying for me, including my family of faith at St Paul’s Cathedral. All those prayers ascended to heaven, and I was blessed with an outpouring of God’s grace’.

In her amazing story, Naomi reflects another important insight Paul talks about in our second reading: ‘God is faithful: by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (1 Cor 1.9). God gifts us his grace so that we may endure to the end. And the gift of God’s grace is best found in fellowship—in the friendship of those who follow God’s Son, Jesus Christ. And that fellowship extends across the globe, with those of us here praying for Naomi’s safety enabling her to feel the grace she needed to do the work she was called to do.

God’s grace at work in her life was not just something that happened inside Naomi, but it was something that others could see in her, she told me: ‘When I left, my head of finance said in his farewell speech – your faith was visible, you were a servant leader. This was my greatest joy, that God’s grace shone through me to my team and all those I came across. I was given a cross to bear, and God’s grace helped me carry it’, Naomi said. When we let God’s grace flow through us, we enable God’s love and mercy, his compassion and healing pour through into our world. And when we work in the strength of God’s grace, we ourselves may become signs of his faithfulness that encourage others to seek out God’s grace for themselves.

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God’s grace always surprises. It sometimes is unexplainable, and sometimes a bit out of the ordinary. Canon Prof Kate Drummond AM is a neurosurgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Victorian Cancer Centre. She told me how she often has experienced grace in the face of terrible prognoses, and found strength to continue, to love, to be grateful—in spite of terrible outcomes. But she also reminded me that sometimes, through God’s grace, we may experience unexpectedly great outcomes—miracles. This is what she wrote from Capetown, where she is on a conference: 

‘A young man had lung cancer—the not smoking type. It had gone to his brain—multiple large tumours. He had been turned down for surgery by many neurosurgeons. He was paralysed on the right and could barely talk. His oncologist called me to say he had a new drug that might help—but that the young man would die before it could work if I didn’t operate to reduce the pressure on his brain. His father and fiancée pleaded with me. The oncologist said it was worth a try’. 

Canon Kate told me that she was terrified of the risks, that he might die during the surgery. But she said yes. Kate told me: ‘The night before the surgery he was married in the hospital garden. He had his honeymoon in a hospital bed on the neurosurgery ward. His only words left were yes, no and a lopsided smile—he was so happy to be married and given a chance. The surgery went well. He was no better, but was alive and the drug worked amazingly well. Seven years later—for a man who was given days!—he has completely recovered, with no sign of cancer, normal function and a young son’. A miracle of grace, courage, persistence and faith. Canon Kate finished her email to me: ‘He and I catch up by phone occasionally when I need to be cheered up! God is great!’

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The season of Advent is one of miracles. The miracle of God’s for us, that made him give us the greatest gift of all. His Son come among us as a human baby born in Bethlehem. The miracle of God’s forgiveness, that made his Son give his life for us that we might live forever. The miracle of God’s faithfulness, that made him send his Holy Spirit across the world to empower us—his followers—to tell this story of grace to others.

If you have yet to experience the transformational grace of God in your lives, I encourage you to pray that God would pour his grace into your hearts, so that you may come to know his Son Jesus, and find friendship and fellowship in this place. Do speak to myself or my colleagues after this service about our summer enquirer program, Alpha, and our baptism and confirmation classes. And if you are already a committed disciple of Jesus, then I encourage you to pray that God would strengthen you to show forth his transformational grace in the world. 

For all of us it is my prayer, with Paul our patron, that God would open our eyes to his presence in the world. That he would establish and strengthen by his Spirit so that we might know his faithfulness. That he would empower us by his grace that the testimony of Christ might be strengthened among us as we wait for the revealing among us of our Lord Jesus Christ. Come, Lord Jesus. Maranatha.

© Text: Andreas Loewe (2023), Image: Ming Zhou (2023)

‘Open wide your hearts also’ (2 Corinthians 6.11)

A pastoral letter to Voters in the upcoming Referendum on First Nations Constitutional Recognition and a Voice to Parliament from Andreas Loewe, Dean of Melbourne (German Version)

In a few weeks’ time, Australians will be headed to the polls. The referendum on Constitutional Recognition of First Peoples and the establishment of a Voice to Parliament is one of the most important decisions we will take in our lifetime. It truly is an historic event. On 14 October, I will be answering ‘yes’ to the question: ‘A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?’ I hope you will join me.

For me as a Christian, reconciliation is at the heart of my faith. By his death on a cross, Jesus broke down the things that fundamentally divide us. On the cross he reconciled us to his heavenly Father, and opened a new and living way to be reconciled with one another (Heb. 10.19-20). As his followers, Christians are called to enter with him into the ministry of reconciliation. St Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians: ‘God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Corinthians 5.19). Christians are called to be Christ’s ambassadors ‘as though God were making his appeal through us’ (5.20).

Not only individuals need reconciling. Enter nations need reconciling. From the time of nation was colonised by European settlers, First Peoples were dispossessed and moved from their ancestral lands. Hundreds of thousands died as a result of this settlement—whether in armed conflict, or through infectious diseases brought by the colonisers. The ripple effects of settlement have a continued effect on our First Peoples: proportionally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more disadvantaged than other Australians. Attempts to ‘close the gap’ have failed to deliver the desired outcomes. 

In 2017, Aboriginal People from across Australia met at the heart of the nation, Uluru. There they issued an absurdly generous invitation to later arrivals in Australia to journey together with First Peoples, the Statement from the Heart. The Statement is gracious and visionary. It is practical as well as achievable. It is an offer from heart to the heart to be walking together on the ways of justice and reconciliation. And as such, for me it profoundly echoes the Christian message calling on each to work for reconciliation. When I first read the Statement, I opened my heart to its message, and in my heart said ‘yes’ to its invitation.

Aboriginal People have opened their hearts wide to us later arrivals. In the Statement from the Heart they offer our nation a new way to journey together to build a new Australia. As Uncle Glenn Loughrey said: Without anger, without seeking revenge they offer an act of deep forgiveness – from heart to heart. Yet despite this gracious invitation, the current debate on the Referendum has been divisive and vindictive. We are offered an incredible gift. I believe that, if we close our hearts to the Statement from the Heart, and the process of justice for First Nations through Voice, Treaty, Truth and Makarrata (coming together after a dispute) we also close our hearts to our nation’s better future.

History is calling. Our nation stands at a crossroads. Whether we receive or reject the Statement from the Heart will shape our future. 

Early in the Christian era, the church in Corinth had found itself at a similar crossroads and Paul wrote them a letter. He felt that the church in Corinth had closed their hearts to the message of the good news of God’s reconciling love. Paul told the Corinthians to reconsider and open their hearts to reconciliation:

‘We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also’ (2 Corinthians 6.11-13).

Let’s open our hearts to the Statement from the Heart. The Voice is calling from the heart. Please join me in saying yes.

Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Yours, Dean Andreas.

Image: Elspeth Kerneborne/TMA

Entering into the ministry of the Good Shepherd

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne at St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne,
on Good Shepherd Sunday, 30 April 2023

This morning’s readings are an invitation to us to accept the care of Jesus and, in his name, to share that care with others. They tell us that before we seek to offer care for others, we first need to receive the care of Jesus ourselves, by becoming members of his flock. They charge us to open the doors of our churches—our sheep fold—to others who are not yet of our fold but also belong; and to guard the doors of our fold against those that would cause harm to the community of Christ. Above all, they set before us a vision of a flock that is unified, and grows, when people share in fellowship and prayer, feed on the word of God and the bread from God’s table, and generously share these gifts with others.

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Our gospel reading takes us to the Jerusalem temple. It is winter, the last months of Jesus’ earthly ministry have begun. Jesus has just opened the eyes of a man born blind. People had come to faith in him and began to follow him. Others were deeply offended by the claim that he called on God as Father; that he claimed a unique relationship that enabled him to know God’s will, and to do God’s works, in a way that was so radically different from that practised by the traditional Temple priests. People flocked to Jesus and heard him teach in the temple precinct. And Jesus tells the people a parable, a teaching story. 

Coming to God, the Father, to be saved is like a sheep fold, a walled enclosure with a gate. Those inside are gathered together. The walls provide safety and warmth for the flock. There is a gatekeeper and a shepherd, and both keep watch over the flock. The gatekeeper ensures that only those who are meant to be inside the fold are admitted. The shepherd shields and feeds the flock: at daytime, he leads the sheep to pasture and watches over them. At night, they are kept safe in the fold, with the gatekeeper on watch for any who would break in and steal, or cause harm. 

In Jesus’ teaching story, the shepherd and the gatekeeper are charged by God to keep God’s people safe and feed them, and to bring in others to share the security of his fold. In fact, Jesus tells the people that he is both the Shepherd, and the Gate. He is the One who feeds and pastures God’s people, and he is the one who admits people to God’s fold. He alone is the way to God, Jesus teaches in the temple. ‘I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them’ anyway, he attacks the very people who had hitherto laid claim on God’s authority.

In the temple, the traditional gateway to God, Jesus teaches that the sacrifices of thanksgiving and sin offerings meant to give access to God were, in fact, useless. Jesus himself is the Gate to the sheepfold; there is no other way to reach the Father. Offering sacrifices to seek God’s favour is like trying to sneak into the sheepfold by climbing over the wall, Jesus tells: ‘anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in another way is a thief and a bandit’, he begins his temple teaching. Their leaders had killed the sheep and destroyed the fold. God was rightly absent from them, and God’s people rightly did not hear their voice.

We enter into communion with God through Jesus, our gospel reading tell us. He is the Door to God as well as the Shepherd of the sheep from whom we receive everything that is needed for our spiritual lives. Jesus shelters his own, he leads us and cares for us. By entering his fold, we may find safety from danger and food for living in thisworld, and salvation and eternal pasture in the world to come. ‘I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish’, Jesus will tell them later, ‘no one can snatch them from my hand’.

Entering the fold means listening to Jesus’ voice. Jesus will later tell the temple priests: ‘you do not believe in me, because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them and they follow me’. Those who listen to Jesus’ voice may enter into his fold and find there safety and belonging. They will be known by name, and called his own. People who are known by name are never mere acquaintances: Jesus here speaks of a living bond between him and his followers: God has given them to him to keep safe forever. Those who are held in Jesus’ hands are held in the hands of God himself: ‘my Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand’, he teaches.

Because Jesus and his Father are one, his sheep will be led and nurtured by a selfless leader, who will never abandon his flock, even in times of danger. Jesus will not hand over his own in order to save himself. He is the leader who remains with his own until the end. ‘I lay down my life for the sheep’, he promises. ‘The reason that my Father loves me, is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again’, he tells the people later. ‘No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and to take it up again’. This is Easter leadership: the self-giving leadership of the One who gives his own life so that all might have life forever.

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One who heard that teaching, the apostle Peter, will later reflect on this model of Christian leadership. In his first epistle he tells us, ‘Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps’. Follow the model of Christ, the fearless leader who gives his life for his own, in leading the people of God. Follow the model of Christ by sharing with him in seeking out the lost and bringing them to safety. And always remember that we too were once lost sheep; are folks in need of salvation. Peter writes, ‘he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness’. The remembrance of our own salvation is the motivation for saving others: Because we once had gone ‘astray like sheep’, we are called to bring others to Christ, and find in him the shepherd and guardian of our souls.

Christ is the Good Shepherd. He knows his own, he calls and saves them; he feeds them and leads them. He is the guardian of our souls, Peter knows. Christian leaders are to be like shepherds, guarding Christ’s flock from harm. People who go out to bring in the lost, people who guard the souls of those that are saved through Christ forever.

I wish our church had exercised a leadership like that set before us in our readings today: both going out to search and save the lost, to meet their needs and feed them, and keeping those who have been found and returned to the fold, safe from harm. But all too often the church has only exercised parts of that charge and failed to keep the charge of fully being caring shepherds of God’s people.

Let me explain: there have been times when we opened the door to the sheepfold to those who would destroy. We failed to watch the gate and keep our flock safe from harm. Wolves in sheep’s clothing entered the fold and ravaged the flock. We kept in power and esteem those who were causing harm or enabled harm, and turned our eyes away from their abuse because we were too concerned with the upkeep of our own reputation and structures.

The abuse of vulnerable people by members of the church, the sexual abuse of children by church leaders, and the domestic abuse within church families, is an indelible stain on our church. We will never be able, I fear, to make full reparation for the harm we have caused. But we can choose to speak out to condemn abuse, and speak out against harm, and better educate ourselves to safeguard Christ’s own flock.

Here at St Paul’s, we take safeguarding extremely seriously. Our staff and leaders receive clearances for ministry and, alongside or volunteers, are trained in safeguarding, and we set a culture where we encourage conversations about what it means to keep people safe—both when they are here at church and when they are in their own families. We want you to know what you can do to prevent harm. Leaders of God’s flock are held to the highest standards, today’s readings tell us. Where people are hurting because of the actions of the church, where people’s lives have been scarred and closed off from the fullness and abundance offered by the Good Shepherd, we need to challenge our leaders, and change. ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly’, the Good Shepherd tells us.

Failing to guard the gate is one failure of leadership. But so is keeping the door of the sheepfold shut altogether. All too often we shut the doors to those who long for shelter and nurture. We fail to search for the lost, prevent them from entering into friendship of Christ. We fail to look beyond ourselves to see a world longing for meaning and meaning-full life, because we are too preoccupied with our internal affairs and struggles.

Over the past three decades, the tear in the fabric of the Anglican Communion has become a rift. Here in Melbourne, we live right on the fault-lines of that rift. We won’t, I fear, be able to heal that rift. But we can choose to shift our perspective from looking inwards to looking outwards, and open our doors to those who seek to enter into Christ’s friendship, and find his grace.

Here at St Paul’s, we have decided to stop staring at the growing rift in the Anglican Communion, to stop wondering when it might tear, and instead concentrate our energies in re-opening the doors to our sheepfold. We know that people in our community here hold different opinions on the matters that divide our global communion. But we want to hold a generous space, where we model respectful disagreement. Where we choose to set aside our differences in order to concentrate on the shepherd-ministry that is Christ’s, and which is his gift to us. When we look beyond ourselves and our differences we can share in the work of seeking out, welcoming and bringing in people who long to hear Christ’s voice.

We do this through our studying of the Scriptures, our fellowship groups, our advocacy and our hospitality. ‘The gatekeeper opens the gate, and the sheep hear the voice of the Good Shepherd’, Jesus teaches.

Friends, we all are invited to enter into the ministry of Christ, the Good Shepherd. We are each invited to hear, and recognise ourselves, the voice of Christ in our lives, and to share his words, his call, with others. ‘I am the good shepherd, my sheep listen to my voice’, Jesus tells. Hear Christ’s call, listen to his word, and know yourself loved by him. And we are each invited to enter in through Christ, the gate, to find community, safety, and nurture. Just as we are called to share his ministry of keeping safe the fold, his own, by the way we look out for and nurture one another, by the way we strive to ensure that all members of Christ’s flock may flourish. ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture’, Jesus assures us. Keep safe Christ’s own, help others grow in faith and love, and share with him in shepherding his people.

Now may the God of peace who, through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

(Hebrews 13.20)

© Andreas Loewe, 2023

Easter in times of conflict

Easter Oration delivered at Melbourne Grammar School by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, on Wednesday in Holy Week 2023

406 days ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, setting off a war in the heart of Europe that has embroiled the entire world. Last Sunday, I walked alongside Ukrainian Christians at the Palm Sunday Rally for Refugees. There is a large Ukrainian community here in Melbourne, and I joined Bishop Mykola Bychok of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and other faith leaders in leading the rally through the streets of the CBD. ‘The war in Ukraine has led to 8 million people being made refugees’, Bishop Mykola told the thousands of people attending the Palm Sunday Rally. ‘Four million are refugees in our own country, Ukraine. Another four have fled to places as far away as Australia, Canada and South America’. More people than live in our state have been made homeless and fled the war. 

Earlier, I had asked another Ukrainian priest what it is that we can do here in Australia now that the war in his homeland is in its second year. ‘Pray for an end to the war’, Fr Andrej told me: ‘work for peace in the world, and tell the truth about the war in Ukraine’. These three actions—prayer and worship, working and advocating, and truth telling—are central to our lives as followers of Jesus, and will sustain us in times of conflict such as these.

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During Holy Week and Easter, we follow Jesus on the journey to the cross in real time. Day by day we follow more closely to the place of his suffering that is our salvation. For Christians, the cross is not the end of our journeys. Rather it stands at the beginning of our walk with Christ. One of my heroes of the faith, the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, put it this way: ‘The cross is not the terrible end of a happy, pious life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of our community with Jesus Christ’. For those of you who do not yet know about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, let me give a brief introduction. A charismatic academic theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was well known for his direct, persuasive writings about what it meant for ordinary people to follow Jesus. Actively opposed to the rise of Fascism in Germany from its earliest days, he was one of the leaders of a group of over 7,000 pastors who, in 1934, broke away from the German Protestant church in protest of Nazi anti-Semitic laws that required all state employees, including pastors, to be ‘Aryan’. Bonhoeffer worked to train pastors for this illegal church, and worked to create communities of people who would understand what it means to follow Christ in times of conflict.

Because of his resistance, Bonhoeffer lost his lectureship, his freedom to broadcast, publish or speak in public. Over the coming years, he was sent out of the country for his own safety multiple times. And yet he chose to return and join his family in actively resisting Nazism. His brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi recruited him into a group of double agents, The Canaris Group, led by none other than the head of the German military intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Bonhoeffer committed to truth telling by smuggling evidence of Hitler’s war crimes out to Allied countries, while his brother-in- Hans was personally involved in a number of attempts to assassinate Hitler. The Canaris Group helped smuggle Jews to safety from Germany and occupied territories. 

It was sending money to support Jewish refugees they had helped reach Switzerland, that led to the whole Canaris Group being arrested in 1943. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned. First in Tegel Prison, then in a cell under the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, and later in Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1944, he was tried late at night, without witnesses, before a drumhead court-martial hastily set up in a laundry in Flossenbürg concentration camp. The documents about the failed ‘20 July Plot’ to kill Hitler had been found. In the final weeks of the war, Hitler personally demanded the liquidation of the entire Canaris Group. On 9 April 1944, three weeks before Germany’s total surrender, Admiral Canaris, his deputy General Oster and Bonhoeffer were humiliated, stripped and hanged on a butchers’ hook. Some witnesses say Bonhoeffer’s death took six hours. His brother-in-law Hans died the same day, in Sachsenhausen Camp. This year, their anniversary of death falls on Easter Day.

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‘The cross stands at the beginning of our community with Jesus Christ’, Bonhoeffer tells and adds: ‘the cross is laid on each Christian’. ‘In each case’, Bonhoeffer says, ‘it is the one cross’—the cross of Christ, on which he suffered and died on Good Friday, and over which he triumphed at Easter. When we witness to Christ through our words and actions, we bring Christ to the world, carry an inestimable gift to others. We witness to the One who carries our cross by carrying one another’s burdens. By telling the truth of the suffering and injustices others face, by advocating and fighting on their behalf, and by praying for and with them.

Telling the truth is one of the most powerful things a Christian can do. Last Sunday, faith and political leaders from across our state, Muslims, Christians, Jews, people from all walks of life, came together in calling on our government to give refugees a fair go. Holding nations accountable for their actions by speaking out, making the state responsible for what it does, is what Christians are called to do in times of conflict. Telling the truth, time after time, even against hope, even when we are wearied by the effort, will ultimately win out. Prophetic truth telling is what brought down Apartheid in South Africa and, here in Australia, led to the release the refugees on Nauru and the Park Hotel in Carlton, and to the opening of a visa track for refugees on temporary protection visas. Telling the truth about the sins of the past brought reconciliation in South Africa and, I hope, will be what also will lead to greater justice for First Nations people here in Australia.

Working for peace in the world, likewise, is an essential part of Christian discipleship. Commenting on Christian living under the repressive Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer said: ‘Where the world despises other members of the Christian family, Christians will love and serve them. If the world does violence to them, Christians will help them and provide them relief’. The outpouring of practical support by the nations neighbouring Ukraine, the unheard-of support of the world-wide community, is one way of showing forth the values of Christian living in times of conflict. If the ‘world’ feels too big for you, your local community and government is tangible and knowable. Supporting community organisations working with refugees, or even attending rallies like last Sunday’s are good ways in which each of one of us can show practical support. (Xavier College had a group at the March. I’d be delighted to welcome a group from Melbourne Grammar next year). 

Working for peace in the world means writing to our political representatives; advocating for swifter, more generous action in settling those displaced from war zones. You may never receive an answer back from your MP, but where many express the same concern, MPs do take note. In this way, we work regardless of the many people who seek to make faith irrelevant in modern society, and regardless of the many people, perhaps even a majority, who slumber when others suffer. This is what heroes of our faith like Bonhoeffer did in the 1930s and 1940s, and it is what we are called to do as we face the same challenges today.

All these actions—telling the truth and working for peace—are underpinned by prayer. Prayer is what unites us with Christ and resources our resolve. Prayer reflects the inward reality of faith to our world. By our prayer and worship this Holy Week and Easter we, too, can help others gain glimpses of this eternal reality. If you are already committed to being part of a worshipping community, do join its Easter celebrations. If not, then please join one or, of course, come to your Cathedral this Easter. 

It is by our own actions that we can shine some of the light of the resurrection in our world. When we live as disciples in this world—by our prayer, by working for peace and by telling the truth to power—Jesus himself will help us bear our burdens of faith-filled living and sacrificial action in this world. In the same way that Jesus’ disciples witness to his deeds of liberating power, so Jesus himself will witness to us in the time of our trial and suffering. 

This is what celebrating Holy Week and Easter, what faithful following of Jesus in times of conflict means: to stand by Christ in his suffering in the trust that, by doing so, we will also share his victory. Stand with him in the darkness of Good Friday in the trust that, by doing so, we will shed the brilliance of his resurrection light into the dark places of our world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer assures us that our Easter celebration becomes real when we witness to Christ in this world. Because Jesus will bear witness for us in the world to come: ‘Those who have held onto Jesus in this life will find that Jesus will hold onto them in eternity’, Bonhoeffer assures us. ‘Easter reveals to us the entire glory and power of God. Just as God raised Jesus in inexpressible power, so too will he lead his people from death to life. This is where we look in hope today’.

I wish you all a blessed Holy Week and a happy Easter.

Andreas Loewe and Katherine Firth have published Journeying with Bonhoeffer: Six Steps on the Way of Discipleship, on which the biographical summary is based.

Image attribution: Dietrich Bonhoeffer with children preparing for confirmation (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R0211-316 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Turning away from sin and embracing life—a reflection for Lent

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne at St Paul’s Cathedral on the First Sunday of Lent 2023

At the beginning of Lent, the church’s season of renewal and growth, stands the reminder that we humans are mortal, and sinful. On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, we offer the opportunity to be signed on the forehead with a cross—in ash. The symbolism of this ‘ashing’ has its roots in the solemn act repentance of the Jewish people: putting on sackcloth, simple, unadorned garments, and ashes on the head, as signs of returning to God, of conforming to God’s will. ‘Remember, o mortal, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, the priest says as he ashes each worshipper. ‘Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’.

During the six weeks of Lent, our Sunday readings explore the journey of turning away from sin and being faithful to Christ. We are going to hear from Scripture what it means to be far removed from God through human sinfulness and are encouraged to think about what it takes to know and do God’s will. For much of Lent we will be hearing from our patron, St Paul, through the first chapters of his epistle to the Romans. For Paul sin is not a light matter: he takes sin very seriously indeed. In the New Testament, the Greek word for ‘sin’, harmatia, is mentioned 173 times. Of those 64 times by Paul. If Paul is the New Testament author who is most concerned with sin, then his Letter to the Romans is the epistle that most considers what sin is and means: of the 64 instances that Paul writes about sin, sin is mentioned 48 times in Romans. 

Sin, for Paul, is not simply wrongdoing, or the daily struggle to live a values-based life. Sin for Paul is a deep-rooted principle of evil, and wilfulness: is the power that does harm to humanity and the root of all its conflicts. Sin is always present in human community, Paul knows: even­—especially, he would say—when we wish for good, evil is readily at hand.

If Paul is the New Testament author most concerned with sin, he is also the writer most concerned with the way in which we can rid ourselves of its destructive effects. The epistle to the Romans is Paul’s first and longest letter. It is, in fact, the first Christian text to be written following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul is writing to the Jewish-Christian community in Rome to encourage them to forgo their differences and quarrels, which for him are signs of sinfulness. Instead, he tells them to recognise the unity they can enjoy by knowing Jesus Christ; and to discover for themselves the harmony and mutual love that are the fruits of Christ’s forgiveness. Sin has an effect on the way we think, Paul tells them. It has an effect on the way we eat and drink, and it has an effect on the way we die, he reminds them. Forgiveness and grace, on the other hand, is what enables us to live together as the people God loves, and is the basis for our confidence that Christ has overcome death.

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Today’s readings tell us the story of how sin came into the world, and how it affects everyone. They take us to the very beginning of the story of God and his people, and the first acts of human disobedience that opened the way for sin and evil to enter our world. They tell us that evil has become our basic problem, and ultimately the cause of our death. They show us how sin seeks to tempt us with things we long for­—food and comfort, reliance and security, power and influence—and how sin may use good things—including God’s word—to tempt us. At the same time, they assure us that, although sin is a universal problem, redemption—the forgiveness of sin—is available to all people and that God judges and punishes sin itself by overcoming it through Jesus Christ.

Our first reading, from the book Genesis, takes us to the abundant and peaceful garden of creation. God made it, and knew it to be very good. He placed humankind in the garden to tend and protect it, and permitted humans to name and therefore have influence over all creatures. He placed all things necessary for a rich life in the garden, walked the garden himself and lived closely among his people. God knew his creation personally, and loved it, and sought for it to flourish. God also placed the key to knowledge at the heart of the garden: the knowledge to see the world as God sees it—frail and complex, full of choices, requiring a nuanced course of constant decisions to navigate life. Humankind, our reading tells us, desired and acquired this knowledge. That which appeared to them as a delicious delight, revealed itself to be a deadly duty.

Where previously people had lived in harmony because they knew only harmony, now they knew both good and evil. The two humans instantly knew their vulnerability, our reading tells us—knew that they were figuratively and genuinely naked before God, and rushed to cover up their nakedness, in the hope that God would not notice their choice. The writer of Genesis speaks of the act that has become known as the ‘fall from grace’ in allegorical language. The garden might have seemed harmonious, and very good, but cunning and deception was already present in this idealised community. The persuasive serpent represents the double-tongued talk of evil persuasion, and the venom that brings death: the point of the story is that evil will talk smoothly, that evil will tell that our choices are simple when they are not, and that evil will, ultimately, leave us vulnerable and unprotected. We will not be protected by the loincloths we may conjure up for ourselves from the first thing that is at hand. Sin will have its prize, and that prize is human life: evil, our reading tells us, is the reason for sin, and sin is the reason why people die.

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Our Gospel reading takes us to an encounter between the author of evil and Jesus Christ. Jesus had just been baptised. There was no need for Jesus to be washed from sin in baptism. His cousin John the Baptist knew that Jesus alone among humans was without any sin, and called him out: ‘why should I be baptised by you’, John asked his cousin, ‘when I in fact have need to be baptised by you’. Jesus of all people needed no washing from sin, and yet took on the ritual in order that ‘all righteousness might be fulfilled’. Jesus submitted himself to the Law of Moses, and its requirements of righteousness. And as he came up from the waters, once all righteousness had been fulfilled, God opened heaven and anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit, and called him his beloved Son. The same Spirit that had anointed him now led him into the wilderness ‘to be tempted by the Devil’, our reading tells us.

We would expect the Spirit-filled Jesus to be full of power and strength, driving away Satan, in the same way in which he drove out demons. But Jesus does not evade temptation by driving evil away. He fasts, and prays, and at the moment of his greatest vulnerability—famished after forty days—he encounters the tempter. And Satan tempts Jesus to use his powers to serve himself: ‘command these stones to become bread’. And Jesus, who will share a few loaves and fishes with thousands and who will turn water into gallons of fine wine for others, resists. God’s gifts are used to serve God and neighbour, and not to serve self.

Satan tempts Jesus three times: tempts him to test his reliance on God by an act of wilfulness by causing a spectacle. And Jesus who would later rather endure the loneliness of the cross than call up a legion of angels, resists. The last temptation is power—not the power that serves others, or the power that sets humans free from the effects of sin and evil by bringing healing and wholeness, but the power that enthrals, subdues and tyrannises. ‘If you worship me, I will give you all these kingdoms’, will give you all human power. And Jesus, whose kingdom is not of this world, finally casts Satan away, and commits himself to worship and serve only God. 

All righteousness is fulfilled in this act of dedication, in which Jesus commits himself to be the One who will take away all sinfulness by his death on the cross. As Jesus walks away from the wilderness, John observes in his gospel, his cousin who had baptised him, instantly knows him to be the sacrificial lamb that would be killed so that all have life. ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’, John declares (John 1.29). Sin must be terrifying indeed if it takes the Son of God to take it away. God made Jesus, the sinless one, to be sin, so that all sin might be taken away, our patron saint tells the Corinthian church (2 Corinthians 5.21). The principle of sin is eradicated—taken out at the root—when the Lamb of God is killed, and Christ lifted up on a cross.

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Sin is terrifying. It applies to all people, our epistle reading argues convincingly. For those living under the Law of Moses, the rules of life given to the people of God on Sinai, the Law holds them accountable for their deeds. They will be judged on the basis of their observance, or lack thereof, of the Law. Would it be better not to know the Law, Paul asks rhetorically? Well, those who live apart from the Law, those who have never known God, will also be held accountable for their living. All are subject to God’s judgement; both those who live under the Law, and those who do not. Just as all are subject to sin: ‘there is no one righteous, not one; there is no one who understands’, Paul tells the Romans (Romans 3.29): ‘All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God’.

‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, we solemnly recalled last Wednesday. Remember that the effects of sin are death. As the ash crosses were marked on our foreheads, we were also reminded of the remedy for sin: ‘turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’. Turn away from sin. In the next few chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans we will see that Paul has faint hopes for us: alone, Paul believes, we will never have the capacity to turn away from sin. Sin, simply put, is all pervasive, and hard to escape under our own strength. But together with God it is possible to turn away from sin. When we turn to Christ, when we remind ourselves daily—in our prayer and actions—of the goodness and love of God, and the sacrifice and selfless acts of Christ, then, Paul rightly knows, we have a chance to turn from the sin to which all of us are subjected. ‘Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’.

Next Sunday, our readings will tell us more about at what this faithful turning to God, this act of committing ourselves to God, looks like. We will hear words of promise and reassurance, hear that God seeks to bless and not to condemn. Today, though, let us take seriously the gravity and effects of sin. That no one lives without the daily struggle against sin. That without the daily need to turn from turning from the enticements of sin to serve self—to provide for our own comforts first, or only ever strive for our own recognition and renown—that without the daily turning from sin, and focusing on Christ, we remain subjects to the tyranny of evil. ‘Turn away from sin, and be faithful to Christ’.

Where sin is deadly and clouds our life, turning to Christ is joyful and life-giving. If you have not yet committed to turning to Christ, and seeking baptism or confirmation, I encourage you to talk to one of our clergy about what committing to Jesus Christ means. If you have already made the commitment, in your baptism, to reject evil and turn to Christ, you will have experienced the joy that discipleship, that following Jesus can bring. When your fundamental commitment, made in baptism, is lived out day by day in discipleship, by every action and work of yours, choosing at every step to turn to Christ, and choose life and joy, and thereby rejecting sin and death. 

This Lent, I invite you to pray with me, each day that we might choose Christ, choose life. You may wish to pray the simple prayer of the penitent, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner’. Or you may wish to pray the lines from the prayer that Jesus taught us, asking that your will be conformed to his: ‘Lord Jesus, thy kingdom come, thy will be done’. Especially when you feel that you are tempted to sin, or when you feel that God is far from you, I encourage you to pray for God to meet you in your need. And if you are already committed to prayerful living, I invite you to pray for those who still need to make that fundamental commitment to living with Christ. Pray for a friend, or a group of friends, whom you would like to see turn to Christ. Again, do so consistently, and joyfully, knowing that it is in turning away from sin, and our faithfulness in Christ, that we may share in the life that is forever.

‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But God is righteous and justifies all who have faith in Jesus’. Thanks be to God.

© Andreas Loewe, 2023

The Silence where God speaks: Commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at the Seventieth Anniversary Commemoration of the Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the presence of the Consul-General of Japan, at St Paul’s Cathedral on 9 August 2015, marking Hiroshima Peace Day:

This morning’s readings (1 Kings 19.1-15, Ephesians 4.25-5.2, and John 6.35-51) challenge us to make sense of destruction and disaster as places where God himself is present, invite us to see the hope of resurrection even in the midst of great loss and devastation. They tell us that it is when we work for reconciliation and shun bitterness that we live the lives that God intended us to live when he made this world, and declared it to be ‘very good’.

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On this day seventy years ago, the city of Nagasaki was struck three days after the world’s first atomic bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima. On impact, the bomb destroyed five square miles of the city of Hiroshima, and a square mile of the hillier city of Nagasaki. Home of the Mitsubishi works, which had been commandeered to produce armaments for the Japanese war effort, most of the Mitsubishi armament factory and almost all of its steel works were destroyed by the raging fire unleashed by the bomb, as winds of up to 1,000 km/h fanned fires of up to 3,900 degrees.

It is a miracle that 12% of the city’s dwellings escaped destruction. The two explosions claimed more than 129,000 lives on the day they were launched, and probably another 120,000 or so lives in the following months, as people died from the effects of the severe burns or radiation sickness. At the time, the aim of the two atomic devices was to cause ‘prompt and utter destruction’. Although the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 caused greater destruction and loss of life than the two nuclear bombings, it was the immediate and utter destruction caused by the bombs, and their use in a sequence of terror, three days apart, as a ‘rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth’, as President Harry Truman put it, that brought to a rapid end the Pacific War (Truman Papers 1945-53, 97: ‘Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference, 9 August 1945’).

While Truman acknowledged the ‘tragic significance of the atomic bomb’, the device was intended to be used ‘until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war’, the President declared after the destruction of Nagasaki. ‘Only a Japanese surrender will stop us’, Truman concluded. On the day after the destruction of Nagasaki, the first steps to surrender were set in motion. A week after its destruction, the war was over. For the past seventy years, the world has tried to make sense of the ‘tragic significance of the atomic bomb’ and to control its use. The boundaries between perpetrators and victims of destruction became terribly blurred in devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, no atomic device has been used in the countless acts of warfare since these ‘twin shocks’ (Truman Papers, 97).

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Our first lesson, from the first book of the Kings, is written from the perspective of a survivor of great devastation. The prophet Elijah himself was at once a perpetrator and a victim of great destruction. Living some 2,800 years before the events we mark today, Elijah also had once brought down fire from the skies upon his opponents, killing the priests of the Canaanite fertility god Baal by fire and sword (1 Kings 18.33f). Now he is facing the consequences of his greatest triumph: hunted, persecuted, laid low, Elijah fled from his homeland into the wilderness, walking through the desert to the place where God had first called to himself a people. On this reverse exodus, tracing the journey of the people of Israel back into the desert lands, Elijah, too is sustained by heavenly food: the bread made by angels sustained him, fortified him at the time at which was ready for his own life to be taken away, to starve himself intentionally to death.

At the mountain, Elijah is commanded to make ready to encounter God: he leaves the cave in which he had hidden himself, and awaits God. And the destroyer of God’s enemies by fire and sword clearly expects God to reveal himself in destruction: a terrifying wind that split mountains and rocks, a devastating earthquake and a great fire ‘passed before the Lord’. But God was not in the signs of destruction. God was neither in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire. ‘After the fire there was a sound of sheer silence’, and it was in the silence after the fury, in the empty space after the destruction, that God was. God meets the perpetrator turned victim in the silence of destruction of fire, wind and shattered rocks, and hears and answers him. And God gives his prophet a new vision, and a new direction; he sends Elijah away to consecrate new rulers for a new era: Hazael as king of Syria, Jehu as king of Israel, and Elisha as his own disciple.

God is in the silence following the destruction. God is not the means of destruction. Which is why for many of us, President Truman’s thanksgiving prayer for the fact the atomic bomb ‘has come to us; … and we pray that God may guide us to use it in his ways and for his purposes’ may strike a jarring note (Truman Papers, 97). Yes, God is there where the high winds of destruction battle the landscape so that rocks crumble. Yes, God is there where the devastating fire scorches all it consumes. Yes, God is there where the earth quakes and destroys. But God is neither the earthquake, nor the whirlwind, nor the fire: neither at Mount Horeb, nor at Nagasaki. Yes, God is there where the world is shaken and destroyed, but God is not the source of destruction – even if called down by those who, like Elijah and President Truman, firmly believed themselves to be on God’s side.

Instead, God is there in silence, ready to give new direction, to inspire to choose new and better rulers, to sustain and uplift. God is there in the silent space that enables his people to take stock of the devastation, and to begin to breathe again where fire and wind fanned flames that killed and destroyed. That sheer silence that is a sign that God himself is present.

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That silence is not an empty space. It is a space for life, a life-giving space. In our Gospel reading we see that silence filled with words, filled by the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ (John 6.35-51). Jesus speaks words of hope and trust into the silence left by destruction and devastation, suffering and sadness. Jesus speaks words of life into this world of so many deaths. ‘This is the will of the Father who sent me’, Jesus says, ‘that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day’. And just so that we can take comfort and hope that this promise is not an empty space, but a life-filled, life-giving space, Jesus makes his promise again: ‘This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who believe in the Son and believe in him, may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day’ (John 6.39-40).

The fruits of this life-filling space that is promised for all who have ears to hear, to listen out for it in the midst of even the greatest catastrophe; the fruits of this life-giving space are forever just as they are for now. Yes, Christ will raise up those who trust in him on the last day. Those are the eternal fruits of that life-giving space of God’s presence. But there are fruits to be reaped in every generation. Fruits that stand at the heart of our reading from the epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 4.25-5.2): fruits that flourish where we ‘put away from us all bitterness and wrath and wrangling and slander, together with all malice’ (Ephesians 4.31). Fruits that flourish where we are ‘kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us’ (Ephesians 4.32). Fruits that will bear real fruit now: and fruit that will last (John 15.16). We bear this lasting fruit where we become ‘imitators of God’, see ourselves no longer as different, but as family adopted by God, ‘beloved children who live in love’ (Ephesians 5.1).

We bear this precious fruit where we live in the way ‘Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Ephesians 5.1). Christ calls us to bear that costly fruit, and promises us that when we bear the fruit that lasts, God the Father will give us ‘whatever we ask in Christ’s name’ (John 15.16).

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‘Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life’, Jesus tells his hearers (John 6.47). As we stand in silence and contemplate the horror and terror of war, both conflicts past, such as the cataclysmic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and conflicts present, it is my prayer that, in our silence, we may find the life-giving space, life-shaping space where God reveals himself.

It is my prayer that by our living as imitators of God we may attune our ears to listen out for that God-given space, that God-given word, even in the midst of the din of destruction, and the clamour of conflict. And it is my prayer that having heard God’s word to us, we may recognise the God among us in our neighbours, committing ourselves to the work of reconciliation and peace, ‘for we all are members of one another’ (Ephesians 4.25).

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen (Ephesians 3.20-21).

Letting go to walk with God in the greater peace: celebrating Frank Callaway

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne on 11 August 2015, at a Memorial Service commemorating the Hon. Frank Callaway QC RFD:

As Frank Callaway retired from the Supreme Court of our State, he thanked his colleagues in his accustomed gracious manner, and told them that in retirement he would return to his first loves: ‘history and philosophy and those aspects of human experience that, even now, are best expressed in religious language’ ([2007] VSC, Transcript of Speeches, p. 19). As we give thanks for Frank’s life, we also do well to turn to his first loves to make sense of the hope of the life that is forever: history and the kind of philosophy that is best expressed in terms of the language of our faith.

For Frank shared the faith in a life that is forever, even should our life here on earth be cut short. Just as he scrutinised the history that stands at the heart of that faith: the history of the carpenter from Nazareth, who was revealed to be the Lord of life one Passover eve in Jerusalem, as his life, too, was taken; at the time that the sun hid his face and the moon obscured her gaze, in darkness and alone. The mystery of the empty tomb, with its neatly rolled up grave-clothes, and a somewhat officious young man that turns the grieving away, redirecting them to the place where their journey with Jesus had begun: ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him, just as he told you’ (Mark 16.7).

Frank’s life was profoundly shaped by this story, and this faith. It was this story that led him to excel, to strive to serve a cause greater than self: to seek to bring justice to others. It was the desire to serve the cause of justice that led him, at an early stage in his career to choose to devote his energies to cases in the appellate court. Seen by some to be a risky move, his specialisation, ultimately, led to his appointment to the Appellate Bench, and an opportunity significantly to shape Victorian jurisprudence ([2007] VSC, Transcript of Speeches, p. 3).

At the heart of the desire to serve an earthly justice was, without a doubt, Frank’s conviction that in so doing he would take a share in doing ‘what the Lord does require of you: to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God’, as the prophet Micah reminded the people of Israel in our first lesson (Micah 6.6-8). In that sense earthly justice was an expression of divine justice – a justice that did not seek material recompense in the first instance ‘thousands of rams …, ten thousand rivers of oil’, even giving our ‘firstborn for my transgression’, but rather a justice that sought a change of heart, sought metanoia, repentance, and the transformation of life and circumstance (Micah 6.7, cf. Mark 1.15).

This is how Frank himself would put it in his retirement magnum opus of philosophy and faith, Reflections (‘Dougall A. S. Smith’, Reflections [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2013]): ‘the intution of God led to compassion, not retributive justice’. And that compassion was shown forth most fully in the life of the builder from Nazareth who was himself both the one formed our universe, and was himself God in human form; the divine logos at the beginning of all creation, and the divine Son, Jesus Christ the Lord: the author of this world, of all life and, as our second lesson knows, the author of our salvation (Romans 8.31-35).

Through the incarnation of Christ, the ‘intution of God’ turned a retributive justice into compassion, opening a way beyond the material principle of repaying evil to the principle of justice itself, whereby neither ‘hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword’, neither ‘death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’, as St Paul reminded the Roman church (Romans 8.35, 38-39).

In the last few years, Frank pondered these questions deeply. In doing so, like many of the first hellenistic Christian writers, he drew on the work of the Greco-Roman philosophers to make sense of the ‘inexpressible and glorious joy’ of knowing and believing in the invisible, risen Son of God. The apostle Peter put this act of believing like this in his first epistle general: ‘Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy’ (1 Peter 1.8-9). That joy, Peter knew, was motivated by the telos, the end result, of our faith: ‘the salvation of our souls’ (1 Peter 1.9).

Frank grappled with the concept of the truth, the validity, of St Peter’s claim in his Reflections: ‘if Christianity is true, the image and likeness of God would become the goal or telos of humanity and that image and likeness would be revealed in Christ’ (Reflections, p. 48). If Christianity is true, then the goal of our human journey is the inxepressible joy of knowing that divine justice. The justice that by right could demand full repayment for our tresspasses, but instead is reflected by the selfgiving compassion of the author of our salvation.

And it is that knowledge, that can enable us to bear the burdens of seeing others suffer; whether through illness and pain, or through injustice and ill-treatment. And it is that strength which can enable us to do, in this life, what ‘the Lord requires of us: to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6.8).

In his Reflections, Frank hedged his bets on what the reward for a life lived according to the maxim of Micah and the apostles Peter and Paul might be like. For him it seems to have been not so much inexpressible joy, as simply inexpressible. This is what he wrote: ‘In the final analysis, life after death can be intuited or believed in, but it cannot be understood or imagined: … to do so, is literally impossible’. Frank concluded: ‘I often think that one should therefore live this life as well as possible and leave the afterlife to take care of itself’ (Reflections, p. 32).

Frank himself chose to let go of the constraints of this life and embrace the inxepressible, indefinable life of eternity. As part of his reflections on life, justice and the life after death, he also spent time reflecting on what it means to let go: ‘It is of the essence of the spiritual life … that one must first “let go”: … [this is first of all] a matter of stopping and, as it were, doing nothing. Later it extends to letting go of ideas, as well as mental habits that cause unnecessary suffering. For some people there is a release from anxiety and a sense of inner peace.’ (Reflections, p. 1). ‘Put very simply’, he would conclude his work, ‘to let go of the ego, the source of separation, anxiety and much else that is destructive, [is] to walk with God’ (p. 74).

At the end of his own life, Frank did let go, and entered the simply inexpressible life to walk with God. Now, having himself ‘let go’, Frank shares the closer walk with God, and the greater peace – that peace which passes all understanding. And we, who are still facing the complexities of this life, who still live by faith and not by sight, are now invited to ‘let the afterlife take care’ of Frank.

For us who are left behind, remains the task to celebrate his having succeeded in his intent to live his life as well as possible: touching the hearts of many, hearing the pleas and appeals for justice of many, meeting them with fairness and compassion and, wherever appropriate and possible, a justice tempered with mercy. We now may ‘let the afterlife take care’ of Frank. We now may let Frank go into the greater peace to walk there with God, because we share his hope and trust in the compassion of God that shone forth in the person of Jesus Christ. We now may let Frank rest in God’s peace because Christians believe that the author of the life of the universe at the beginning of all things is also the author of resurrection, ‘the conqueror of death’ (Romans 8.37).

And so, in this hope, let us commend Frank to the mercy and protection of the God who calls the departed to walk with him, live with him, in his peace; the One who invites us to become ‘more than conquerors with him through his love’ (Romans 8.37). The One who convicts us by his mercy, and bids us believe ‘that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8.37-39). Amen.

The Servants of all: obeying Christ’s call to discipleship

A sermon preached at the 101st Patronal Festival of the Parish of St James the Great, East St Kilda, by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, on the Feast of St James, 2015:

I bring you warm greetings from the congregations of St Paul’s Cathedral: your home church at the heart of our city. It is a joy to be with you on your patronal festival, as you celebrate 101 years of the foundation of the parish of St James East St Kilda, and to reflect with you on the ministry of your patron, St James. My predecessor, Dean Hussey Burgh Macartney, was, of course, both Dean of St James’ Cathedral and of St Paul’s Cathedral; so the example of St James stands at the very beginning of our story as a Cathedral. It is therefore a delight to be explore together what the example of St James the Great may mean for us today as we seek to be followers of Jesus Christ in this generation.

St James was one of the great apostles. Among the first four to be called, together with his brother John, and Simon Peter and Andrew, for the writers of our Gospels, he is one of the examples of what it means to follow Jesus to the cross and, following his glorious resurrection from the dead, what it means to lead God’s people. Before he met Jesus, and responded to his call to leave his former life behind and follow him, James was firmly established in his family’s fishing business on Lake Galilee. A partner together with his brother John and their father Zebedee, they were moored near the shore of Lake Galilee, preparing their nets to fish, when Jesus called them to leave their nets behind and instead to go, follow him, and become ‘fishers of men’. Peter and Andrew, James and John, responded immediately to Jesus’ call. So insistent was Jesus’ call that James and his brother ‘left their father in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him’ (Mark 1.20, Matthew 4.21).

Andrew and Simon, James and John were not only the first four disciples to enter into discipleship, but from the moment of their call they became Jesus’ key witnesses. They were among the ‘chosen witnesses’ who saw Jesus transfigured on a high mountain, they walked alongside Jesus at his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and were taken aside by Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, to be near him in his agony (Mark 9.2-8, 13.3, 14.33). They sought to be like Jesus, and promised to follow him even into the darkest moments. And as they promised to follow, they clearly expected great rewards, today’s Gospel story suggests. A chapter earlier, Peter had already questioned Jesus whether there would be a reward for their discipleship: ‘We have left everything and followed you; what then will there be for us’ (Matthew 19.27). And Jesus assured them that ‘at the renewal of all things’ they would be seated on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’, adding, ‘but many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first’ (19.29). Having been promised great reward by the one who called them to follow, today James and John openly ask for an even greater reward: to share the seats of honour when Jesus came to reign.

Simon and Andrew, John and James serve as much an example of godly leadership and faithfulness, as they are an example of human fallibility. Perhaps it was because they had been witnesses of glory – had been among the chosen four to see Jesus transfigured in resurrection light – that they were unable to grasp the fact that Jesus’ kingdom might not be ushered in by glory but through suffering. In spite of the fact that Jesus openly speaks about the suffering he will undergo at the hand of those who oppose him; that his ascent to Jerusalem would be an ascent to the cross, the disciples still hope to shield Jesus from suffering, hope to enter the kingdom in glory, not through agony and pain. They still hope for a reward of glory, and have not yet understood that the reward they will gain is sharing in Jesus’ suffering.

How could they understand? They had seen Jesus’ deeds of power; had seen him heal the sick, command the elements, raise the dead to life again; had seen him transfigured in glory and confessed him as God’s Son. How would the all-powerful God let his Son not enter into glory, save him from his enemies. And the glimpses of the divine glory they had perceived in Christ to them were signs of the reward they would enjoy. So convinced are they still that Jesus will accomplish his triumph in Jerusalem, that they were arguing among themselves who among them would be the most worthy; who would be allowed to take the place occupied by Elijah and Moses on the Mountain of the Transfiguration. Who was greatest among them; who would be seated at the right and the left of their transfigured king on the thrones he had promised them all.

And at each stage of their conversation about greatness and glory, Jesus had stalled the discussion, either by reminding them that his intent was to go to Jerusalem to suffer and to die, or by telling them that the hierarchies of his kingdom were not those they had hoped for: ‘the first will be last, and the last first’. Obtaining the prime thrones promised them, then, would require diplomacy and skill. Which is why it is the mother of James and John put in the request for her sons’ glory. Commenting on Matthew’s gospel in the Fourth Century, St John Chrysostom suggests that James and John were too ashamed to ask for themselves. Their mother kneels before Jesus in humble submission, like the Canaanite woman when she begged Jesus to save her daughter’s life (Matthew 15.25), or the woman who knelt before Jesus and anointed his feet with her tears. The posture may be the same, but otherwise the two pleas couldn’t be more different: James and John were not asking for transformed, healed, lives; but for glory and power.

Jesus’ response to the two is charactistic: rather than grant them their request, promise them glory; he promises them suffering. ‘Can you drink the cup that I am to drink’, he asks them; can you drink the bitter of cup of suffering and death that I will pray the Father to let pass from me in my inner agony in Gethsemane? And the two still do not understand, assent to gain glory, and are told that they will indeed drink deep of the draught of suffering, and die for their discipleship; are told that discipleship will mean carrying the cross before entering into glory. ‘The Son of Man’, says Jesus concludes, ‘has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20.28). Where in the Hebrew Scriptures God had promised to give rich nations, the local superpowers in ransom for his people, here Jesus tells the disciples that he will give his own Son in ransom so that his creation may, once again, be called ‘very good’.

‘The Son of Man has come to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matthew 20.28). Jesus has not come to rule the nations in glory; his ‘kingdom is not of this world’. Jesus is not one who ‘seeks great things’: the reverse is the case for God’s servant. For in reflecting on his own servanthood, Jesus recalls the role of the Servant of the Lord from the prophecy of Isaiah; God’s chosen who ‘makes himself an offering for sin’ (Isa 53.10). The humble servant who will take on ‘our infirmities and bear our diseases’ (Mt 8.17); the innocent victim who made no answer to his accusers (27.12); God’s lamb whose blood is ‘poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins’ (26.27-28). God’s Son who gives his life as a ransom for God’s people, who gives himself to die, so that all may have life forever.

I sometimes wonder how much James and John understand of Jesus’s calling to be a victim, a ransom for many. I wonder whether they understood his invitation to follow him in terms of that calling. Their behaviour in the Gospel stories suggests little such understanding. James and John wanted to bring down fire, St Luke tells us, upon the Samaritan village that rejected Jesus (Luke 9.51-56). James and John, were called the ‘Sons of Thunder’ for a reason: the name suggests impulsive characters, people who are ready to repay agression or rejection with like coin. People who understood well what it meant to claim an ‘eye for an eye’ but who had yet to learn what it may mean to ‘love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute us’. ‘Can you drink the cup that I am about to drink?’, Jesus asked the Sons of Thunder (Mt 20.22). Yes we can, they replied readily, but naïvely.

Of the two only John lived to reach old age in Ephesus. James drained his master’s cup far sooner. In about 44 AD, Herod killed James ‘with the sword’ (Acts 12.2). James received the Roman sentence of a political troublemaker. Ten years after Jesus’s death, the brother we commemorate today was still a Son of Thunder. But at the same time, he will also have known that to be at Jesus’s side on his throne in glory meant to suffer, on his left or his right, like the thieves at Calvary (Mt 27.38). He will have known, like the righteous thief, that the way into paradise was by asking for God’s mercy rather than to enter into God’s glory without first taking up our cross: the mercy that led God to give his only Son as a ransom for many; the glory that shines forth from the cross, where Christ is enthroned as King of all nations.

Today we give thanks for James’ witness to the service that is revealed in suffering. The martyrdom he suffered shines as an example of what it means to exercise true leadership: not the leadership that seeks ‘to lord it over others’ (Mt 20.25), the leadership that is based on good connections and the intercession of intermediaries. On the contrary, the reason we give thanks for the leadership of St James the Great is because he came to realise that the way of ruling among the people he lived was not the way of God’s kingdom. There, to be first among people meant to be the slave of all (20.27). There, to serve God in his people was the only way to experience perfect freedom. As we give thanks for the example of St James, we pray that we, too may be equipped with grace to follow Christ on the way to the kingdom, that we may be given grace to follow in his spirit humbleness and gentleness, by seeking to be servants of others, by seeing the image of Christ in the least of his brothers and sisters, and so to share in building up his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Let us pray:

O gracious God, we remember before you today your servant and apostle James, first among the Twelve to suffer martyrdom for the Name of Jesus Christ; and we pray that you will pour out upon the leaders of your Church the same spirit of self-denying service by which alone they may have true authority among your people; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

‘Their Pattern and their King’: Together Singing God’s Praises

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at the 2015 Keble Mass, at St Martin’s Hawksburn, on 20 July 2015:

John Keble, whose memory we honour at this annual Eucharist, is probably one of the most prolific hymnodists of the nineteenth century. In his The Christian Year: thoughts in verse for the Sundays and holydays throughout the year, the Oxford Tractarian succeeded in providing a hymn for each day of the Church’s calendar, many of which have become firm favourites among Anglican congregations. Most of you will have a favourite Keble hymn, though you may not necessarily think of it as a ‘Keble’ hymn. Your favourite might be an eventide or morning hymn, like Keble’s translation of the traditional Greek evening hymn, Hail, gladdening light, or his joyful, New ev’ry morning is the love, his Lord in thy name, thy servants plead, his majestic hymn in celebration of the fourth evangelist, Word supreme before creation, or his contemplative Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear.

Many of Keble’s hymns are characterised by their vivid imagery and fine poetry, as befits a theologian who also held the position of Professor of Poetry—then as now very much a working poet’s post—at the University of Oxford. In hymns such as Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear, each verse is a poem in itself:

Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,
It is not night if thou be near;
O may no earth-born cloud arise
To hide thee from thy servant’s eyes.

The presence of Christ in the human soul is likened to the sunrise of Easter morn: the risen Son becomes the sunrise of the human soul that can illumine even the darkest night. Here, in a single stanza, the great mystery of salvation is translated from the events of Easter that changed the course of human relationships with God forever, and is brought closer to the experience of those who would hymn the One who shines in our hearts: bright Easter light chases away the remaining shadows, ‘it is not night if thou be near’. Death is overcome by life, and makes our own deaths journeys home to God:

till in the ocean of thy love
we lose ourselves in heaven above.

                                                                   Sun of my soul

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Keble’s hyms are both pastoral, and theological. They seek to strengthen us, the singers, in our own understanding of the faith, and in our devotion to God—the subject of all of Keble’s hymns. In his Pentecost hymn, When God of old came down from heaven, he creates bridges in poetry between the eternal, and the universal and the personal and individual. God who is ‘of old’ sends his Spirit to ‘fill the Church of God’, and seeks to fill each human heart with his goodness and love: ‘to turn to God and be saved, all the end of the earth’, as our first lesson puts it (Isaiah 45.22). Keble ends his Pentecost hymn with this passionate appeal:

Come Lord, come Wisdom, Love and Power,
open our ears to hear;
let us not miss the accepted hour;
save, Lord, by love or fear.

                                    When God of old came down from heaven

Or, in his hymn for St John’s-tide, when he sets forth in words of poetry the mystery of the Word-made-flesh at the heart of our Gospel reading (John 1.1-14):

Word supreme, before creation
born of God eternally,
who didst will for our salvation
to be born on earth, and die. …

                                        Word supreme, before creation

The eternal God takes flesh, Keble tells in his hymn, so that at the end of all time, we humans might partake in God’s presence forever; be assured of God’s judgement of love. With God, the God-with-us in Christ, there is no more need for Christ’s followers to fear the day of reckoning, Keble writes. Indeed, God’s wrath has been turned to love, for those who trust his promise, Keble has us sing:

Lo! heaven’s doors lift up, revealing
how thy judgments earthward move;
scrolls unfolded, trumpets pealing,
wine-cups from the wrath above,
yet o’er all a soft voice stealing
‘Little children, trust and love!’

                                Word supreme, before creation

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Keble’s hymns have profoundly influenced Anglican worship. True, some of his many hymns have fallen out of use, mainly because of their length: the four-verse hymn that lent its title to this sermon, Blest are the pure in heart, for instance, started off as a seventeen-verse hymn for St Matthew’s Day—we just don’t sing hymns that long any more. Other of Keble’s hymns have been significantly re-edited for modern use: many of the translations of hymns from the ancient church, such as his ‘Faithful Cross! Above all other’, and his ‘Sing my tongue’, for example, form the textual basis for later hymns of the same titles compiled by J.M. Neale and the editors of the English Hymnal and, as such, have shaped much of our Holy Week observance, or our ritual understanding of the Eucharist.

The enduring popularity of Keble’s hymns derives from his skill to bridge the world of theological thought—of often intricate abstract concepts such as the Incarnation or the real presence in the Eucharist—with the world of human experience. In order to achieve this, Keble draws on his own theological depth, and his profound understanding as someone redeemed, loved, and claimed by Christ. The overarching purpose of Keble’s hymnody is this: that Christ is ‘our pattern and our King’, and that, through Word and Sacrament

still to the lowly soul
he doth himself impart
And for his cradle and his throne
chooseth the pure in heart.

All of these strands—the evangelistic, the theological, the personal and devotional—Keble skilfully renders into poetry and, some might say, ‘Anglicanism’: Keble’s rendering of ageless theological truth in a very Anglican garb gave shape to modern Catholic Anglican theology. His output and his insight made him a natural choice for the editors of the English Hymnal; indeed, while Keble is outshone by his earlier contemporary Charles Wesley, and his fellow Tractarian J.M. Neale, in the New English Hymnal, he still does maintain a very strong popular presence in our hymnals.

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In tonight’s epistle reading (Romans 10.10-15) St Paul asks the questions that motivated Keble and his fellow Tractarians, and the many evangelists, apostles, priests and faithful, before him in their mission. How may those who are still far off in the life of faith ‘call on one in whom they have not believed?’ How are those outside, or at the margins of the church, ‘to believe in one of whom they have never heard?’ Indeed, ‘how are they to hear without someone to proclaim Christ?’ (Romans 10.14). Keble, who sought to bring the truth of the gospel close to us by the words of his hymns and tracts, is to be counted among the bearers of Good News. ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good News’—Paul concludes today’s epistle, citing Isaiah (Romans 10.15, Isaiah 52.7). How beautiful are those who bring Good News: and you will agree that Keble’s hymns cause us to sing of the Good News of our salvation most beautifully.

How can we come to know Christ, and how can we come to a closer relationship with him, Paul asks in our epistle, and provides himself the answer: ‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hearts that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’ (Romans 10.10). Earlier in our Chapter, Paul spoke of how his heart’s desire is for all to be saved, to be called to come close to Christ. And in the light of this fervent desire, he considers the role of those who proclaim Good News, who bring the Word of God close to us, so that all can proclaim: ‘the Word is near you, on your lips and in your hearts’ (Romans 10.8).

Keble shares this desire to expound the gospel, in his own day, and still does so today through his hymns (though he also wrote countless poems—sonnets, hymns and ballads—some on key aspects of the faith, such as the role of Scripture, others on heroes of Anglicanism such as Ridley, Cranmer and Hooker, others on the danger of dissenters and the necessity for church unity, the ‘love of mammon’ he perceived in the United States, the dwindling of congregations, or the desire to keep the service short: ‘but faith is cold, and wilful men are strong,/ And the blithe world, with bells and harness proud,/ Rides tinkling by, so musical and loud,/ It drowns the Eternal Word, the Angelic Song;/ And one by one the weary, listless throng,/ Steals out of church, and leaves the choir unseen/ of winged guards to weep, where prayer had been,/ That souls immortal find that hour too long’, Length of the Prayers).

It was St Augustine who famously asserted that ‘those who sing, pray twice’. Keble’s skill with pen and words enabled him to add instruction in the Christian faith to St Augustine’s sung prayers. ‘How can they believe in one of whom they have never heard?’, Paul asked (Romans 10.14). Throughout his life Keble sought to bring the faith he had inherited to the people around him. His motivation to do so was to bring the faith of the universal church to the English-speaking people where they were, in words and music they understood. Throughout his life Keble yearned for the hearts of his fellows, and his own heart, to become ‘a place where angels sing!/ … And enter in and dwell,/ And teach that heart to swell/ With heavenly melody, their own untired employ’ (In Choirs and Places where they Sing, here followeth the Anthem).

Like our gospel writer, Keble is a poet of the Word made Flesh. And like our gospel writer Keble puts the coming of the Word of God in human flesh at the centre of his hymnody. But equally important to him is a second central strand of John’s gospel: that God’s Word can come so close to us that it can truly be said to dwell in us, that it can sustain us, in body and soul. And for Keble, as for John, this personal in-dwelling is found in the bread of the Eucharist. Keble expounds the true presence of Christ among us in the Eucharist, when he invites us to sing with him:

Oh, come to our Communion Feast:
There present, in the heart
As in the hands, th’ eternal Priest
Will His true self impart.

       Gunpowder Treason

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‘The word of God is near you’, Paul knew, if it is brought to us by evangelists who make known the Good News. The word is so near that it is on our lips and in our hearts, Paul explained. The Word of God dwelt among us not only as the historic person in the incarnate Christ, who walked this earth; but that Word dwells with us in us today, comes close to each one of us, as we come to receive him on our lips in the sacrament we are gathered to receive, and in order to render our hearts to him.

By right, the final words ought to belong to the poet and priest we celebrate today:

Thou didst come thy fire to kindle;
Fain would we thy torches prove,
Far and wide thy beacons lighting
With the undying spark of love.
Only feed our flame, we pray thee,
with thy breathings from above.

    Hymn for Easter-tide

It is my prayer for you and me, that we may come to know Christ in our hearts, by receiving him in the gifts of bread and wine he bestowed on his Church. It is my prayer that, filled with his presence we, too, might come to share in the work of making him known with all the skills and gifts God has given us, translating again the faith of old to a new generation longing, like Paul’s and Keble’s contemporaries, for someone – for you and for me – to proclaim to them Good News.